Social Hat partners Jack Hadley and Cary Snowden are currently in the midst of the Online Media Lecture Series, a nine-week course being presented at Brigham Young University. Our Thanks and appreciation to Jeff Sheets, director of the Advanced Advertising Lab and the interest of the Advanced Advertising students for inviting us to share our experiences in social media marketing.

You can find us each Thursday in the Joseph F. Smith Building (JFSB), room B002 from 11:00 a.m. to Noon.

The SunTweet event was a major success. Everyone had a great time, we met lots of people, and collectively gave to a deserving charity.

Our presentation to Serenity…

[audio:serenity.mp3]

Money was posted to the Serenity account. Our work here is done!

After reviewing the event, and counting up our contribution to Serenity I am overwhelmed with a great feeling that is the spirit of giving. I have never done anything like this before, and admittedly have to swallow back a lump in my throat as I consider how we may have helped a person in need. Maybe a bill or two, maybe breakfast or dinner, maybe a new pair of shoes, or maybe just a fun trip to a movie or museum. I hope that our contribution will help Serenity and her parents sleep a little easier, take a little break, or bring a little extra cheer. Thank you all for participating.

I just got back from the premier meeting of the Salt Lake City Social Media Club, a meeting of local Salt Lake area social media mavens and marauders*. A good time was most certainly had by all who attended, and there were quite a few of us.

I am not sure of the official numbers, but I am certain there were a minimum of 60 people at the event, and it could easily have been 80 or so. (update: I am seeing official reports of ’71’)

With a good mix of usual suspects and new faces, the meeting provided a great opportunity to say ‘hello’ to old and new friends alike, and to add a handful of people to my list of friends to look for at the next social media event.

A special Thank You goes to the great folks at The Summit Group for hosting the event, and providing the well-received pizza and sodas (at one point drawing applause from the entire crowd as a new round of boxes were brought in).

We started the evening with a healthy round of socializing before tuning in to Social Media Club founder Chris Heuer for a video conference via Skype. Chris welcomed us to The Club, provided an introduction and scope of the club’s structure and objectives, and then answered a couple of questions.

After listening to Chris for a few minutes we all migrated to the downstairs where we had more open space to break into smaller workgroups for a few minutes of focused discussion. There were six or so breakout groups, each with a specific area of social media to discuss. At the end of the breakout discussions a representative from each group presented some thoughts to the rest of the attendees.

Initially skeptical of the structure, I soon found myself getting involved and enjoyed hearing the insights from each of the groups. The breakouts turned out to be a great idea and enforced a sense of value for the meeting. We all left understanding that the discussion was recorded, and will be published at some point in the future. I’ll link from here when that happens.

I took a handful of photos with my phone. Here they are below…

To everyone at the event: Thank you and ‘nice to meet you’. To everyone who missed it; we’ll see you at the next one, to be held on every third Thursday from here on out. Watch the official Web site for details.

TechCrunch is hosting their annual Crunchies awards again, allowing us to vote on our favorites among a range of technologies and startups.

I am a little disappointed that some of my favorites from this last year are not in the running (Jott and Things), but there is a good list of new technologies and if nothing more, the Crunchies vote page is a great place to get a quick overview of the most eye-catching technologies from this last year.

Even if you don’t vote, go to the Crunchies page and see what you might be missing.

This will be a charity tweetup. Attendees are asked to donate $5 (min) to the pot, which will be donated on our collective behalf to a local Utah charity. @startupprincess is taking suggestions for charities, and we will conduct a last minute vote over SocialToo during the event to determine who will receive the proceeds.

What is a Charity Tweetup?

‘Tis the season, of course, so here’s what we are planning: Our Sundance Tweetup will be a Charity Tweetup, meaning that whilst we are socializing amongst ourselves we are also going to be conducting a fund-raiser to donate to a local Utah charity. We’ll all feel good, for sooo many reasons. Here’s how it works:

Our evening will also feature a 25-minute panel discussion featuring five prominent panelists who will share how they have built value for their social audience, and how that has helped them grow their following to monumental levels.

As everyone does, my first response when I heard the term ‘tweetup’ was to pretend I already knew what it meant. Now that I have actually been to a few I can honestly say it is an amazing extension of our virtual network, which in itself is an amazing thing.

A tweetup is an event where people who Twitter come together to meet in person. Normally we connect with our friends online after we have met them. At a tweetup you meet the people you might only otherwise know virtually. Like finally putting a name to a face, a tweetup is a great opportunity to really connect with the people in your network and share just a little more than 140 characters at a time.

I stopped by the Salt Lake Brewing Company tonight to tweetup with Salt Lake City tweeters. Another great meeting in the bag, and a few more friends to follow. Nice to meet you all, here’s the photo, and what a tweetup looks like in real life…